Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add my voice to the discussion on Bill C-26, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the high risk child sex offender database act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.
I would first say, as many of my colleagues have stated in their interventions, that I will be supporting the bill going to second reading for specific reasons.
We believe that at its root, Bill C-26 is an important bill, and we have a zero-tolerance perspective on sexual violence, sexual crimes, particularly those crimes involving children. We want to see the bill go to committee in faith that during the committee hearings, the discussions around certain aspects of the bill will be extensive and productive.
However, yet again, we see another foray into the world of mandatory minimum sentences. As my colleagues were discussing, the issue of mandatory sentences is a troubling issue, and we have ample evidence from our neighbours to the south and here in Canada that mandatory minimum sentences do not produce the results that my colleagues from across the way expect of them.
My colleague asked earlier whether there was any evidence that an individual who was going to commit such a crime sat down and thought about the mandatory minimum sentence such that, “If I do this, I am going to prison for x amount of time.” That would be a rational discussion for an irrational person.
There is ample evidence showing that mandatory minimum sentences do not produce results. However, more important is the issue of the legislative branch intruding into the jurisdiction of the courts. I have brought this up before. Here one of my colleagues brought up the question of why the NDP is so opposed to harsher sentences.
I do not think there is anyone in the House, on this side or the other, who does not agree with appropriate sentences for heinous crimes. However, there is a difference between allowing for harsher sentences in legislation and dictating to the courts that they must, without any judgment by judges, impose these sentences. This is where we have difficulty with the bill before us.
I hope that we can sit down in committee and explore how we can have appropriate sentences prescribed and available while still allowing the judges to use their discretion and abilities, the reasons they sit on the bench, to impose those sentences.
The bill's going to committee would also allow us to explore the potential of unintended consequences.
In the parliamentary summary, one of the commentaries brought forward about the creation of the database is the concern. It says:
A number of comments concerning Bill C-26 have mentioned the possibility of vigilantism rising from a publicly accessible database of sex offenders. Detective Constable Stephen Canton, the police officer in charge of the Niagara Regional Police sex offender registry, is also concerned that “[w]hen you start to identify offenders, you start to get less compliance and it pushes them underground.”
Ultimately, we want to see a bill enacted into law that does what it needs to do, without the sense of going after a mosquito with a bazooka. We need to ensure that we do it right, and this is the work of the committees. We need to ensure that we do not create situations with unintended consequences, such as the one I just read. That would put us in a situation where otherwise law-abiding citizens, through a mob mentality and their own loss and pain, find themselves in a position where they have information that allows them to exact vengeance in an effort to get rid of their own pain. We do not want to this to happen.
We want to ensure that people are protected from those who may repeat. We want to ensure that people are aware of high-risk offenders, in particular those people who have for one reason or another continuously been allowed back onto the streets and who run the risk of reoffending for whatever reason. We need to protect our communities in that way. In enacting this bill, we need to ensure it would do that.
One of the other aspects that I would like to touch on is the amendment that would allow for spouses to testify against one another. Again, this is something I hope the committee will explore, because of unintended circumstances. We do not want to find non-offending spouses in a position where they might be held accountable for the actions of their partners. We want to ensure that their rights as individuals are protected and secured, and that they are not swept up in the net of the actions of their partners.
This bill is said to protect our communities. Like most laws, it would be in place to respond after the fact, after the crime has been committed. In that context, we have to ask whether the bill would act to protect communities. We have to ensure that the resources are there for our communities to prevent crimes of this nature and to prevent the repeat of crimes of this nature.
As I said in the beginning, I will be supporting this bill at second reading, with the full faith and confidence that my colleagues across the way will be open to discussion and whatever amendments arise from that discussion.